Tag: puerto rico debt

+ As Lyft raises $500 million, it is “burning through tens of millions of dollars a month,” losing $127 million in the first half of 2015 on $46.7 million in revenue, according to private fundraising documents obtained by Bloomberg. In a sign of its intense focus on growth in a competitive environment, the ride-sharing company spent $96.1 million on marketing during that period, more than twice its net revenue.

+ Here’s a simple math problem that even my 2nd-grade son should be able to figure out: How many $500 AK-47s can you buy with $500 million? That’s how much oil revenue ISIS takes in every year through its control of lucrative oil fields and the petroleum infrastructure in Iraq, which is five times higher than initial U.S. intelligence estimates, a gross miscalculation that severely underestimated the terror group’s financial health.

+ A Texas Congressman, who’s also second-generation auto dealer, tucked an amendment into the massive transportation bill that passed the House of Representatives last week that helps his family business. The little-noticed provision from Rep. Roger Williams “would allow dealers to rent or loan out vehicles even if they are subject to safety recalls,” reports the Center for Public Integrity’s John Dunbar.

+ The comptroller of financially-strapped Puerto Rico, Yesmín M. Valdivieso Galib, was fined for claiming a homestead tax exemption in FL while living on the island, reports the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo.

+ Puerto Rico needs to lay off teachers, sell public buildings, raise taxes and close schools to avoid financial default and repay its debts, according to a report commissioned by 34 hedge funds owed money by the island. “Sure, Puerto Rico could pay its debt, but at what cost? We are literally cutting off our own limbs just to stay afloat,” said a lawmaker in opposition to the proposal, explaining that 56% of the island’s children live in poverty and that it had already closed 100 schools this year.

+ Jon Stewart’s secret White House visits: How President Obama and his aides went out of their way to cultivate the support of the ‘Daily Show’ host just before crucial policy decisions.

+ Uber isn’t just butting heads with authorities in Paris, New York and London. Now it’s fighting the government in Australia, where a tax commissioner accused the ride-sharing service of “playing dirty” to win the debate over whether it should pay a goods and services tax typically paid by taxi companies.

+ Throughout the debate over the Senate torture report, Republicans liked to blame Democrats for the $40 million cost to taxpayers of the report. But it was actually CIA officials who insisted on outsourcing work related to the review and which paid over $40 million to one of its longtime contractors for administrative work on the report, according to documents obtained by Vice News’s Jason Leopold.

+ Donald Trump unsurprisingly exaggerated his wealth when he claimed that he was worth $8.7 billion last month. That’s almost triple his true net worth, which is closer to $2.7 billion, according to an analysis by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index of his latest 92-page financial disclosure.

Puerto Rico cannot pay its $73 billion in debt – the island needs to restructure its debts and “should make reforms including cutting the number of teachers and raising property taxes,” according to a report by former International Monetary Fund economists obtained by Reuters.

Seriously – are there any potential GOP candidates who said no to a run for the White House this election cycle? The latest big player to throw his hat in the ring is being called out for a history of “lying on steroids” by one of the reporters who knows him best.

The anti-trust argument against Google got a big boost from a new study showing that Google engages in anticompetitive behavior by highlighting its own content, from restaurant reviews to movie theater locations, in search results.

Check out the Migrant Files, a consortium of European journalists who track the human and financial cost of the continent’s aggressive efforts to keep out migrants. The EU spent 12.9 billion euros to keep them out while migrants spent 15.7 billion euro trying to get in.